Quotes About Microbes

At depth, microbes shrink in size and become extremely sluggish. The liveliest of them may divide no more than once a century18, some no more than perhaps once in five hundred years. As The Economist has put it: 'The key to long life, it seems, is not to do too much19.

Mitochondria manipulate oxygen in a way that liberates energy from foodstuffs. Without this niftily facilitating trick, life on Earth today would be nothing more than a sludge of simple microbes.

Almost certainly the most memorable finding of recent years with respect to microbes was when an enterprising middle school student in Florida compared the quality of water in the toilets at her local fast-food restaurants with the quality of the ice in the soft drinks, and found that in 70 percent of outlets she surveyed the toilet water was cleaner than the ice.

The only really reliable way to transfer cold germs is physically by touch. A survey of subway trains in Boston found that metal poles are a fairly hostile environment for microbes. Where microbes thrive is in the fabrics on seats and on plastic handgrips. The most efficient method of transfer for germs, it seems, is a combination of folding money and nasal mucus.

antibiotics, the more opportunity they have to develop resistance. What you are left with after a course of antibiotics, after all, are the most resistant microbes. By attacking a broad spectrum of bacteria, you stimulate lots of defensive action. At the same time, you inflict unnecessary collateral damage. Antibiotics are about as nuanced as a hand grenade. They wipe out good microbes as well as bad. Increasing evidence shows that some of the good ones may never recover, to our permanent cost.

Antibiotics are about as nuanced as a hand grenade. They wipe out good microbes as well as bad. Increasing evidence shows that some of the good ones may never recover, to our permanent cost.

And actually, even normal temperature is pretty good at keeping microbes in check. Just look at how swiftly they swarm in and devour you when you die. That's because your lifeless body falls to a delicious come and get it temperature, like pie left to cool on a windowsill.

In another widely reported study, the Belly Button Biodiversity Project, conducted by researchers at North Carolina State University, sixty random Americans had their belly buttons swabbed to see what was lurking there microbially. The study found 2,368 species of bacteria, 1,458 of which were unknown to science. (That is an average of 24.3 new-to-science microbes in every navel.)

It is entirely possible that some terrestrial microbes are the products of different biogenesis events, in effect 'alien organisms', constituting a type of shadow biosphere

Bacteria mineralized the rocks; they deposited the iron. They made the geology we see.

Disorders in our internal ecosystem—a loss of diversity, say, or a proliferation of the 'wrong' kind of microbes—may predispose us to obesity and a whole range of chronic diseases, as well as some infections.

Microbes such as bacteria and yeast use enzymes to make fuels from biomass. We use directed evolution to perfect those enzymes and make new fuels efficiently.

Microorganisms will give you anything you want if you know how to ask them.

One begins to see bacteria, not as individual species, but as a vast array of interacting constituents of an integrated microbial world.

Frank Ryan comments that The microbes that kill people, particularly those that kill huge numbers in sweeping epidemics, follow, in many ways, the same universal law of predator and prey. It is part of this complex gestalt that the balance is shaped by the behavior of the prey. If the prey moves—if it changes, if its numbers increase or decrease, if its ecology alters—the predator must move with it.29

There are so many examples of human misuse of the Earth that even phrasing this question chills me. If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes. The existence of an independent biology on a nearby planet is a treasure beyond assessing, and the preservation of that life must, I think, supersede any other possible use of Mars.

The enemy was the microbial world, and over the centuries, it has killed more people than all of man's wars combined.

I've been amazed to learn all of the links between microbial health and our general health. This all started by trying to understand fermentation. The fermentation outside your body, and its relation to the fermentation inside your body. The key to health is fermentation, it turns out.

If you don't like bacteria, you're on the wrong planet.

There are more living organisms in a tablespoon of highly organic soil than there are people on the planet.

I've always been fascinated with science and exploring our world, from microbes to the solar system.

That's primordial ooze! It's brimming with microbes! Back in the Age of Mortality, this single basin could have wiped out entire populations. It was called 'disease.

For four fifths of our history our planet was populated by pond scum.

I learned in biology class that more bacteria live and work in one centimeter of my colon, than the number of people who have ever existed in the world. That kind of information makes you think twice about who–or what–is actually in charge.